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Streamline Studios, the Amsterdam-based outsourcing and co-production company, has announced that its revenues in 2008 jumped 45 per cent year-on-year, and that it's now having to hire more staff to cope with demand.

And president and CEO Alexander Fernandez told GamesIndustry.biz that he's confident of continued growth, even as the difficult economic climate unfolds over the rest of this year.

"Well, you're always wanting to beat expectations, but you have to be somewhat tempered, especially right now," he said. "I will still look at this year with bullish optimism, and I'd be very disappointed not to hit what we hit last year, and what's become an ongoing thing for the studio - this type of growth.

"At the same time I understand that this quarter right now is kind of a slow mover for a lot of people and ultimately what we're going to see is a real push at the beginning of the second quarter onwards for the industry in general.

"As for Streamline - most definitely, this is what we're going after," he added.

And when asked what the company's success was down to, Fernandez was in no doubt.

"What I really attribute it to is the acceptance of the industry, not only to embrace outsourcing but also to embrace the new model that's really emerging, that's really going to be coming out in 2009 - and that's co-production," he said.

"Effectively Streamline's been around for close to eight years now, and I remember when we first started out people were sceptical that outsourcing was ever going to happen - if I showed you the numbers it'd be like, 'It's never going to happen.'

"But what we've seen is the realisation across the industry that this really is a smart way to do business, and more importantly that as we start to enter into the next age of development that it's really going to be about smart resource allocation and going to people can execute the first time.

"It's something we've been gearing up for in the past couple of years, and we've just hit that stride."

Among the titles that Streamline has contributed to in the past are Gears of War, Saint's Row and Ghost Recon 2.